I read Medved's Hollywood vs. America several years ago, and he hardly seems like your average film reviewer. He's also an orthodox Jew, very religious, so he's coming from a different perspective than you.

I respect his viewpoint, and you make some good points in response. I'm not at the point yet when I'll have to worry about this (ours are three and 6 months), but it's an awesome responsibility to even *discuss* these issues with a child. But it's one we as parents can't neglect.

Dean, Medved & Lackner's white paper certainly is disturbing. I don't know, I can't judge either whether it portrays the overall situation fairly. I haven't read many comics in the past 10 years.

But for many, many years I was a voracious reader of superhero titles from Marvel, DC, and many of the smaller outfits. Among the first comic books I ever got as a kid (and I still have virtually every comic book I ever bought) were Avengers #4, with the return of Captain America; and an early Earth One/Earth Two crossover, with the two Flashes (Jay Garrick and Barry Allen) slugging it out in a stalactite-filled cavern while Vandal Savage lifts into the air behind them. We're talking early 1960s.

Green Lantern, Flash, Superman, Batman... Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers... Even Doctor Solar and Magnus, Robot Fighter... I read these and other comics by the hundreds up through the late Sixties. Then, after a few years in which I drifted away, I "rediscovered" comics in college, about 1975. It was the era of the "new" X-Men, and the X-Men comics of the mid to late Seventies remain, to my mind, a high-water mark. In the late 70s I was in graduate school at the UW-Madison, and I can still remember the excitement of walking across Madison every month, from my apartment to Capital City Comics, to pick up the latest issue. The X-Men were, to me, never the same after the death of Phoenix.

And from there on in, I bought a stack of comics virtually every month, up until, I dunno, some point in the early Nineties? Up through Nexus, Miracleman, however far up that takes us.

Based on my status as a regular and heavy comic book reader over most of a thirty-year span, I'd agree with you that there's nothing much in Medved and Lackner's account that I find unbelievable. I mean, highly disturbing, yes-- but unbelievable? No, to my instincts, based on my one-time acquaintance with the world of comics, it rings true. Back in the day, I found extremist attitudes of the sort they describe primarily in the comics from the smaller companies, but it was clear to me from the get-go that the attitudes of most people who wrote or produced comics were somewhere over on the Liberal/Left side of things.

In fact, I remember Stan Lee openly remarking in one of his "Soapboxes" back in the Sixties that the merry Marvel Bullpen consisted of some passionate Leftists (or did he say "progressives," or what?), some liberals, and some moderates. And I remember thinking to myself, "Yeah, but what about the conservatives? You got any of those?" Since I've never in my life been anything but some kind of a countercultural conservative, the evident portward list of the comic book world was simply something I put up with, for the sake of my love of all those characters and titles I followed so avidly for so many years.

Just as, I suppose, many people put up with the obvious political leanings of Hollywood, for the sake of their love of the movies. (Never been much of a moviegoer myself.)

What Medved and Lackner report goes far beyond what I encountered in most (note, I say most) of the comics I used to read. But somehow it doesn't surprise me. Disturb me, yes. Surprise me, no.

Dean:

I'm not so sure that it's such a bad idea to inform today's kids of WWII horrors such as the firebombing of Hamburg & Dresden. The sole military significance of Dresden was that it was thronged by refugees from the Red Army, and Stalin had complained to Churchill that those verdämmte Krauts were blocking the roads in front of his tanks. Impossible to count the number of people who were roasted to death in the cellars. Their corpses were reduced to a thick gelatinous mass that had to be scraped from the floors with shovels. The best estimates are that more people died in the 36-hour raid than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Why should young Americans not know these things? Lord knows, I'm no peacenik, but the rah-rah pep-rally stuff that we see now turns my stomach.

As for the real problem--how to protect children from the ordure that permeates the media and threatens to turn open minds into open sewers--I am glad I no longer face that problem. To all of you who are young parents: Best of British luck.

Maybe I'm missing something here, what child is reading a comic book that has genital mutilation as a theme. Comic books are entertainment for children and they should be fun for kids to read. It would take a twisted mind to enjoy that kind of drivel. And I can't for the life of me think of a child that asked for propaganda comics for fun.

Medved's gone on about the same trend in Hollywood as well. Personally, I don't regard him as much of a film critic, and I think he was overreacting, but his complaint was an exaggeration with a grain of truth in it.

The pendulum swings. Forty years ago we had ultra-patriotic war comics in which invincible Americans mowed down stereotyped Asians with banana-yellow skin; a few years later a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate generation of writers were producing outright anti-patriotic comics about a world awash in corruption and greed, and in the 1990s particularly, stories about nonsensically grand government conspiracies were big across all pop culture. It will surely swing the other way in the next few years if it hasn't already.

Note also that the audience for comic books skews a lot older today than it used to, adult collectors are much of the market, and most of today's artists probably don't even think of themselves as producing entertainment for children.

I've read "Global Frequency". Medved wasn't taking it out of context at all.

And then there's always Wildstorm's "Authority" comic -- and "Stormwatch" before that. You don't even want to imagine, much less know, what they make the US special operations community look like in those. (Here's a clue -- the US' government's top assassin, Seth, is a sadistic psychopathic pedophile who gets paid off in kidnapped children delivered live and wriggling to his doorstep by the US intelligence community. I'm not kidding.)

PS -- and the sad thing is, I actually liked "Stormwatch"... except when their storyline had the US government in it anywhere, at which point I was too busy wincing to turn the page. Warren Ellis is a great storyteller, but he's just simply not reasonable on the topic of governments and militaries.

Comic books are not marketed exclusively to children any more than Barbie dolls are.

Some are marketed specifically to adults, in fact.

It's surprising how adult the themes are in comics aimed at young teens though. Overall, I think that's to the good, because young people can handle adult themes much better than most people seem to assume. But parents should be aware of it--and encouraged not to over-react.

As an avid comic book reader, I am all too aware of the adult themes of most of the good comics.

Like Dean, I would never keep my kids from reading what they want, but I will certainly discuss the issues with them, as well as find something for them that shows an opposing side to the story.

My son (10 yrs old) wants to read Hellboy. I gave him a stack of Roman Dirge comics and told him I would give him the Hellboy stuff on his 14th birthday.

As for Warren Ellis - he's just so over the top that sometimes I wonder if he isn't just a parody of himself at times.

Hi all. I am the co-author of the piece you are discussing. I collected comics years ago and loved Marvel Comics. After 9/11 I was curious to see how the comic book industry was going to respond to the current world situation. I presumed we would see support for the War on Terrorism, but with more nuance than, say, in the 1940s. I was dismayed by what I saw being published by Marvel and others. I promise you that everything in the article is accurate and not out of context. Indeed, I insisted on long, fairly detailed quotes, to allow the reader to evaluate the matter fairly.

I’ve two motivations for writing the article:

To Inform Parents. These comics are marketed to kids (as well as young adults) and if you saw the covers on some you would agree that the packaging was deceptive (PG ratings with red, white and blue "Fight Terror" and "Do Your Part" banners). While parents should pre-review all content, it is only realistic to acknowledge that many parents would be fooled by the rating and covers and not think to look further – particularly with a title like “Captain America.” Kids still read these comics. I confirmed this with the curator of a comic book museum who is familiar with the demographics.

To Inform the Public. Particularly in the case of Marvel Enterprises, Inc., the company is being sustained by non-comic book product (films, toys, video games, and the like). There are undoubtedly people buying this product who have no idea that they are indirectly funding hateful propaganda directed against the United States Government. The material in many of these comics is way over the top, in terms of no balance, no rebuttal to anti-U.S. indictments, portrayals of terrorists as advocates for popular causes (such as the abolition of land mines) or terrorists as innocent victims of U.S. Imperialism, equating WWII U.S.A. with Nazi Germany, and so on. There is a paranoid cynicism, indeed a loathing, expressed in some of these comics toward our government. This is the overriding theme of these comics, with no opposing views permitted. Even in a couple of the most recent Captain America comics where we hear “sound bites” that might be interpreted as “pro-American” they are in fact inarticulate responses to 4 page anti-U.S. diatribes or so qualified as to be meaningless – revealing that the writers could not bring themselves to have Cap just come out and say that he loves America and is loyal to the Government of the United States. How very sad.

I have personally gone through significant soul searching and have concluded that I cannot in good conscience financially subsidize a corporation that peddles this hateful speech. I firmly believe that to do so would be unethical. It’s a shame, as several of the new films featuring Marvel characters would undoubtedly be great fun to watch.

Other members of the public should be informed, so that they too can make an informed decision. People who agree with Marvel (and similar publishers) can and should buy their products and see their films. However, those who believe these comic books are destructive should think twice before supporting the corporation that publishes them.

Why do I take this so seriously? I and many others believe that America now faces a very real threat, perhaps the greatest threat we have ever faced, posed by bigoted hateful fanatics who long to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction to use against us. In the past we faced equally evil adversaries, such as the Nazis, but thankfully they did not develop WMDs. During the Cold War the threat of mutually assured destruction kept the beast of global conflagration at bay. Now we have entered a new era. The proliferation of these weapons and the possible acquisition of them by terrorist groups is a horror beyond imagination – and a very real possibility. We must do all we can to prevent this possibility from being realized.

However, in these comic books we instead see one simplistic theme: Blame America (supported by muddled doctrines of “cultural relativism” and “moral equivalency”). For those young people who are totally immersed in reading this comic book material, these publications pose a serious threat of twisting their perception of our country and blinding them to the real danger we face. The end result could well be to undermine support for the War on Terrorism. The consequences of such a trend could be disastrous.

I strongly support free speech and open debate. However, such support should not be confused with some misplaced “duty” to give financial support to those who espouse speech one finds abhorrent. Particularly when we are dealing with matters of this importance.

Thus, I felt a moral obligation to share this information with the broader public.

I probably won’t have time to respond to queries (the last time I did something like this I got sucked into endless cyber-debate and my wife and kids almost threw me out of the house because I was spending so much time in front of the computer). I do appreciate your insightful comments and thoughts though. It is clear from your comments (from Dean and others) that there is a maturity to this discussion group that is lacking in some comic book fan sites. Whether we agree or disagree, I appreciate your input.

All the best,
Mike